Tuesday, December 1, 2009

My Maternal Stats, Part 1

I was inspired by Herstoryan's post to figure out what the average age of my maternal ancestors were when they joined the club known as motherhood (I don't know enough about my paternal tree to figure out the average for the women on that side). Here is what it breaks down to:

24.8 years if I go a strictly maternal route (meaning my mother, her mother, her mother's mother, her mother's mother's mother, her mother's mother's mother's mother). I stopped at my great-great-great-grandmother because that is as far back as I know about that line. Here are the details:

If I take into account all my female direct ancestors on my mother's side of my tree going back to my third great-grandmothers, the average drops to roughly 21 years (my current age!). And the average size of their (all maternal female ancestors as far back as my third great-grandmothers) broods (including children who did not reach maturity)? Roughly 5 children per family. The grand prize goes to my great x 3 grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth (Hudson) Wellons who had 14 children in all. Not surprisingly, the number of children per family went down with the years. In fact, if I were to only go as far back as my maternal great-grandmothers (who were both married circa 1920), the average number of children in each family is about 2.5. So that means, of the 77 children born to all my maternal ancestors (my direct line only, excluding collateral lines of descent) as far back as my third great-grandmothers, only ten were born in the last ninety years. No wonder I'm having a heck of time connecting with other researchers of this side of my family!

On average, my male ancestors on my mother's side of the family (as far back as my second great-grandfathers) were almost 28.5 at the time of their first marriages; their wives on the other hand, were on average 20 years of age at marriage.

In my next post I'm going to look at the average life expectancy for these people among other things. I'm also going to do an in depth study of some averages for a particular family.

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About

I'm a 20-something, long-time genealogy enthusiast from Northern California. My paternal ancestry is mostly concentrated in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada. On my mother's side, I am a 6th generation Californian, with ties further back to many of the lower 48 states.